Creative essay title generator for students

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Insert the keywords.

Use keywords to define your essay’s topic or a central idea. Our title generator will analyze the inserted keywords and search for relevant suggestions in our database. The more keywords you put, the easier it will be to find your perfect topic!

Pick subject category

To get even more accurate results, choose the subject category that suits your needs most from the list. The tool will use both your keywords and the chosen category to find relevant titles. There are plenty of categories to suit every user’s needs. Try to use different ones to find even more interesting and catchy ideas.

Get many great ideas

After inserting your keywords and choosing a category, click the Generate button. The tool will scan the database, which updates regularly. It will suggest creative options for you to choose from. Run it as many times as you need to find your perfect essay topic!

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Tons of attention-grabbing topics, constantly updated databases for relevant results, lots of subject categories to choose from, unique ideas exclusively.

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Tips for using our essay title generator to your benefit

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Is there any specific subject or area of research that has to be covered in your essay? Then try choosing a subject that fits you from the list of suggestions

Choose the best topic

So, you found many title ideas with our essay titles generator. How to choose the best one?Copy your options or write them down. Then, eliminate them individually until you are left with the perfect one.

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73 College Education Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best college education topic ideas & essay examples, 🥇 interesting topics to write about college education, 🎓 good research topics about college education.

  • Should a College Education Be Available to All People for Free? Many students are finding it hard to graduate because of financial constraints, even though the government offers financial support.
  • The Value of Liberal Arts Education in College or University This paper will argue that liberal arts education should be encouraged since it adds value to society by offering the ideal college experience that promotes intellectual growth, personal development, and the acquisition of a wide […] We will write a custom essay specifically for you by our professional experts 808 writers online Learn More
  • Opportunity Cost in Higher Education For instance, going to school would deny the student the opportunity to work. However, the opportunity cost is not the sum of all the other things the student would have done.
  • Utilitarians and College Education The purpose of this paper is to discuss the value of education in utilitarianism and to answer the question of whether a utilitarian can argue that going to college is morally wrong.
  • College Tuition Should Not Rise Students who excel in their studies after the first year of college should be given more financial assistance to encourage them to study.
  • Is College Education Appropriate or Should It Be Mandatory Even though college education is identified to be beneficial to the individuals who attain such qualifications as well as to the society in general, there are some dangers that are associated with attending college.
  • Should College Tuition Be Free: University Education In the view of compromised quality of education, tuition fee should not be free. Thus, tuition fee should not be free because the fee contributes significantly to the development of educational facilities and saves the […]
  • The Impact of Demand on College Tuition The price of a college education is the tuition the students are required to pay while the quantity demanded is represented by the number of enrollments.
  • Stress and Deviance in College Education The other concept of the connection between deviance and stress is the stress factors. Management of stressors and the consequent effects on deviance among college students is yet to be investigated.
  • College Education and Family Foundation However, it is always essential for a person to be able to evaluate the information they have and decide whether they need it or not.
  • College Education in the United States However, college education is necessary to expand personal horizons and increase the overall level of erudition. Thus, the purpose of the college is to teach people how to learn.
  • College Tuition Fees: The Unprecedented Growth The constant growth in college fees that increase at rates disproportional to inflation poses a challenge for those who want to get a high quality education.
  • What Do You Mean by College Tuition Cost? College tuition costs pertains to the charge that a student is obliged to compensate for enrolling and going to public or private colleges.
  • Attending Community College: Pursuing Higher Education This is captured in the report on ‘Education Attainment in the United States,’ which revealed that holders of a master’s degree earned $70, 000 more than their counterparts with less than a high-school diploma.
  • Free or Low-Cost Education at the Secondary Level Overall, although free education seems to be an ideal solution to the problem discussed above, it is not necessarily easy to realize it in reality without impacting the quality of education negatively.
  • Buying Textbooks: Hidden Cost of Studying at College Savvy students have learned a few tricks to avoid some of the high costs of textbooks. The inability to pay for expensive, use-one-time-and-cannot-resell textbooks should not be the determining factor in whether students can go […]
  • American Colleges: Types, Education and Rewards One of the oldest educational institutions for higher learning in the United States was Harvard University, which was established mainly to prepare citizens, the cream of nation, for the ministry and high-ranking posts in the […]
  • College Education vs. Real Business World Experience Prepare for job requirements in a constantly changing marketplace in the 20th century, a high school diploma was usually enough to assure American employers that job applicants could handle most basic functions.
  • Higher Education Administration: The College of Business at the UCCS In this paper, the College of Business at the University of Colorado – Colorado Springs will be thoroughly studied to understand if the institutional mission aligns with the mission of the department.
  • Educational Tests: Toddlers and College Students The collection of standardized data regarding the quality of the learning environment prepared for young children is the intended purpose of this test.
  • American Aviation Colleges Tuition Fee In this research, I intend to find out the average tuition cost for a four-year aviation management course in the American Aviation Colleges.
  • Free College Education in the United States In general, despite the existing controversies and doubts, I want to believe that the US government can promote free education for college students.
  • Adam Davidson: Is College Tuition Really Too High In particular, the writer notes that public funds are usually transferred to the most prosperous classes of the community. The problem is that they do not have the opportunity to pay the price of a […]
  • College Education: Controversy and Its Sources The outcome and the quality of lives after the attainment of the college schooling determine whether it is worth pursuing. Graduates are therefore not guaranteed to get their expected jobs, a factor that makes the […]
  • Personal Responsibility in College Education Personal responsibility involves understanding of the effect of one’s actions on the welfare of others and acceptance of one’s mistakes and failures. In addition, it refers to the attitude of accepting one’s mistakes and looking […]
  • College Majors and Its Role in Education and Work This implied that, what mattered most was the value of higher education to enable an individual to apply mastery in accomplishing a variety of duties in different fields.
  • Current State of Education: College Pressures On the contrary, it should provide students with a possibility to try their skills and abilities and understand what they are capable of. In addition, financial factors should also be reconsidered for students to understand […]
  • Is College Education Worth the Money Not only are people in contemporary society raised and conditioned to believe that one needs college education to succeed in life, but the stiff competition for the few job openings available continue to inform the […]
  • NC Taxpayers and College Education Further, as Research studies show, because of the expensive nature of college education, and because a good number of students come from families with average incomes, most parents cannot afford to pay their children’s college […]
  • Successful Study Habits for College Students The researchers contended that the environment in which students study and their participation in other activities are critical determinants of their success in career and employment.
  • Education in Saudi Arabia: College Teachers and College Problems Speaking of the current state of the college teachers in Saudi Arabia, it is possible to say that despite they strive to follow the footprints of the European countries, they are still facing the difficulties […]
  • Analysis of College Education A need to reduce the cost of college education in the country is necessary. The introduction of online education can also be integral in reducing the cost of college education.
  • Should Every American Have a One-Year College Education Every American should have a one year college education in order to participate in rebuilding the economy of the country. The outcomes of the one year college education are great and have put some people […]
  • Allocating Government Education Expenditures Across K-12 and College Education
  • Assets and Liabilities, Race/Ethnicity, and Children’s College Education
  • Balancing School and Work for Students Pursuing College Education
  • Career, Career Interests, and the Value of a College Education
  • College Education and Social Trust: Evidence-Based Study on the Causal Mechanisms
  • Correlation Between College Education and Students’ Career
  • Impact of College Education on the Middle Class
  • College Education Has Changed Over the Years
  • The Relations Between College Education and Wages in the U.K.
  • College Education Comparison Between America and Vietnam
  • Importance of College Education for Prison Inmates
  • College Education Has Become a Minimum Requirement
  • Why College Education Isn’t for Everyone
  • College Education: People Can Succeed Without One
  • Analysis of College Education’s Socioeconomic Importance
  • College Education: Professional Preparation or Social Integration
  • Reasons Why College Education Still Worth It for Everyone
  • College Education Raises the Chances of Earning More in the Future
  • Comparison of College Education and High School
  • College Education Should Not Be the Main Requirement for a Job
  • Credit Constraints and Human Capital Investment in College Education
  • College Education Should Not Be Free
  • Different Selections for College Education
  • College Education: The Worthwhile Choice?
  • Education Problems With the College Education System
  • College Experience: The Benefits of a College Education
  • Why Cultural Diversity Is Important in a College Education
  • Whether College Education Is Worth the Investment of Time, Money, and Energy
  • Getting Into Debt for a College Education
  • Good Things Derived From a College Education
  • Important Skills for Gaining Success in College Education
  • Making America Great Again With Free Community College Education
  • Parental Credit Constraints and Children’s College Education
  • Prisoners Should Not Receive a Free College Education
  • Reasons Supporting Mandatory of College Education
  • Social Inequalities and Failures in College Education
  • Sorting, Selection, and Transformation of Return to College Education in China
  • Student Debt and Its Effect on College Education
  • The Athletic Advantage Within a College Education
  • The Costs and Worth of a College Education
  • Chicago (A-D)
  • Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2023, October 26). 73 College Education Essay Topic Ideas & Examples. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/college-education-essay-topics/

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PrepScholar

Choose Your Test

Sat / act prep online guides and tips, 177 college essay examples for 11 schools + expert analysis.

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College Admissions , College Essays

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The personal statement might just be the hardest part of your college application. Mostly this is because it has the least guidance and is the most open-ended. One way to understand what colleges are looking for when they ask you to write an essay is to check out the essays of students who already got in—college essays that actually worked. After all, they must be among the most successful of this weird literary genre.

In this article, I'll go through general guidelines for what makes great college essays great. I've also compiled an enormous list of 100+ actual sample college essays from 11 different schools. Finally, I'll break down two of these published college essay examples and explain why and how they work. With links to 177 full essays and essay excerpts , this article is a great resource for learning how to craft your own personal college admissions essay!

What Excellent College Essays Have in Common

Even though in many ways these sample college essays are very different from one other, they do share some traits you should try to emulate as you write your own essay.

Visible Signs of Planning

Building out from a narrow, concrete focus. You'll see a similar structure in many of the essays. The author starts with a very detailed story of an event or description of a person or place. After this sense-heavy imagery, the essay expands out to make a broader point about the author, and connects this very memorable experience to the author's present situation, state of mind, newfound understanding, or maturity level.

Knowing how to tell a story. Some of the experiences in these essays are one-of-a-kind. But most deal with the stuff of everyday life. What sets them apart is the way the author approaches the topic: analyzing it for drama and humor, for its moving qualities, for what it says about the author's world, and for how it connects to the author's emotional life.

Stellar Execution

A killer first sentence. You've heard it before, and you'll hear it again: you have to suck the reader in, and the best place to do that is the first sentence. Great first sentences are punchy. They are like cliffhangers, setting up an exciting scene or an unusual situation with an unclear conclusion, in order to make the reader want to know more. Don't take my word for it—check out these 22 first sentences from Stanford applicants and tell me you don't want to read the rest of those essays to find out what happens!

A lively, individual voice. Writing is for readers. In this case, your reader is an admissions officer who has read thousands of essays before yours and will read thousands after. Your goal? Don't bore your reader. Use interesting descriptions, stay away from clichés, include your own offbeat observations—anything that makes this essay sounds like you and not like anyone else.

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Technical correctness. No spelling mistakes, no grammar weirdness, no syntax issues, no punctuation snafus—each of these sample college essays has been formatted and proofread perfectly. If this kind of exactness is not your strong suit, you're in luck! All colleges advise applicants to have their essays looked over several times by parents, teachers, mentors, and anyone else who can spot a comma splice. Your essay must be your own work, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with getting help polishing it.

And if you need more guidance, connect with PrepScholar's expert admissions consultants . These expert writers know exactly what college admissions committees look for in an admissions essay and chan help you craft an essay that boosts your chances of getting into your dream school.

Check out PrepScholar's Essay Editing and Coaching progra m for more details!

Want to write the perfect college application essay?   We can help.   Your dedicated PrepScholar Admissions counselor will help you craft your perfect college essay, from the ground up. We learn your background and interests, brainstorm essay topics, and walk you through the essay drafting process, step-by-step. At the end, you'll have a unique essay to proudly submit to colleges.   Don't leave your college application to chance. Find out more about PrepScholar Admissions now:

Links to Full College Essay Examples

Some colleges publish a selection of their favorite accepted college essays that worked, and I've put together a selection of over 100 of these.

Common App Essay Samples

Please note that some of these college essay examples may be responding to prompts that are no longer in use. The current Common App prompts are as follows:

1. Some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story. 2. The lessons we take from obstacles we encounter can be fundamental to later success. Recount a time when you faced a challenge, setback, or failure. How did it affect you, and what did you learn from the experience? 3. Reflect on a time when you questioned or challenged a belief or idea. What prompted your thinking? What was the outcome? 4. Reflect on something that someone has done for you that has made you happy or thankful in a surprising way. How has this gratitude affected or motivated you? 5. Discuss an accomplishment, event, or realization that sparked a period of personal growth and a new understanding of yourself or others. 6. Describe a topic, idea, or concept you find so engaging that it makes you lose all track of time. Why does it captivate you? What or who do you turn to when you want to learn more?

7. Share an essay on any topic of your choice. It can be one you've already written, one that responds to a different prompt, or one of your own design.

Now, let's get to the good stuff: the list of 177 college essay examples responding to current and past Common App essay prompts. 

Connecticut college.

  • 12 Common Application essays from the classes of 2022-2025

Hamilton College

  • 7 Common Application essays from the class of 2026
  • 7 Common Application essays from the class of 2022
  • 7 Common Application essays from the class of 2018
  • 8 Common Application essays from the class of 2012
  • 8 Common Application essays from the class of 2007

Johns Hopkins

These essays are answers to past prompts from either the Common Application or the Coalition Application (which Johns Hopkins used to accept).

  • 1 Common Application or Coalition Application essay from the class of 2026
  • 6 Common Application or Coalition Application essays from the class of 2025
  • 6 Common Application or Universal Application essays from the class of 2024
  • 6 Common Application or Universal Application essays from the class of 2023
  • 7 Common Application of Universal Application essays from the class of 2022
  • 5 Common Application or Universal Application essays from the class of 2021
  • 7 Common Application or Universal Application essays from the class of 2020

Essay Examples Published by Other Websites

  • 2 Common Application essays ( 1st essay , 2nd essay ) from applicants admitted to Columbia

Other Sample College Essays

Here is a collection of essays that are college-specific.

Babson College

  • 4 essays (and 1 video response) on "Why Babson" from the class of 2020

Emory University

  • 5 essay examples ( 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ) from the class of 2020 along with analysis from Emory admissions staff on why the essays were exceptional
  • 5 more recent essay examples ( 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ) along with analysis from Emory admissions staff on what made these essays stand out

University of Georgia

  • 1 “strong essay” sample from 2019
  • 1 “strong essay” sample from 2018
  • 10 Harvard essays from 2023
  • 10 Harvard essays from 2022
  • 10 Harvard essays from 2021
  • 10 Harvard essays from 2020
  • 10 Harvard essays from 2019
  • 10 Harvard essays from 2018
  • 6 essays from admitted MIT students

Smith College

  • 6 "best gift" essays from the class of 2018

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Books of College Essays

If you're looking for even more sample college essays, consider purchasing a college essay book. The best of these include dozens of essays that worked and feedback from real admissions officers.

College Essays That Made a Difference —This detailed guide from Princeton Review includes not only successful essays, but also interviews with admissions officers and full student profiles.

50 Successful Harvard Application Essays by the Staff of the Harvard Crimson—A must for anyone aspiring to Harvard .

50 Successful Ivy League Application Essays and 50 Successful Stanford Application Essays by Gen and Kelly Tanabe—For essays from other top schools, check out this venerated series, which is regularly updated with new essays.

Heavenly Essays by Janine W. Robinson—This collection from the popular blogger behind Essay Hell includes a wider range of schools, as well as helpful tips on honing your own essay.

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Analyzing Great Common App Essays That Worked

I've picked two essays from the examples collected above to examine in more depth so that you can see exactly what makes a successful college essay work. Full credit for these essays goes to the original authors and the schools that published them.

Example 1: "Breaking Into Cars," by Stephen, Johns Hopkins Class of '19 (Common App Essay, 636 words long)

I had never broken into a car before.

We were in Laredo, having just finished our first day at a Habitat for Humanity work site. The Hotchkiss volunteers had already left, off to enjoy some Texas BBQ, leaving me behind with the college kids to clean up. Not until we were stranded did we realize we were locked out of the van.

Someone picked a coat hanger out of the dumpster, handed it to me, and took a few steps back.

"Can you do that thing with a coat hanger to unlock it?"

"Why me?" I thought.

More out of amusement than optimism, I gave it a try. I slid the hanger into the window's seal like I'd seen on crime shows, and spent a few minutes jiggling the apparatus around the inside of the frame. Suddenly, two things simultaneously clicked. One was the lock on the door. (I actually succeeded in springing it.) The other was the realization that I'd been in this type of situation before. In fact, I'd been born into this type of situation.

My upbringing has numbed me to unpredictability and chaos. With a family of seven, my home was loud, messy, and spottily supervised. My siblings arguing, the dog barking, the phone ringing—all meant my house was functioning normally. My Dad, a retired Navy pilot, was away half the time. When he was home, he had a parenting style something like a drill sergeant. At the age of nine, I learned how to clear burning oil from the surface of water. My Dad considered this a critical life skill—you know, in case my aircraft carrier should ever get torpedoed. "The water's on fire! Clear a hole!" he shouted, tossing me in the lake without warning. While I'm still unconvinced about that particular lesson's practicality, my Dad's overarching message is unequivocally true: much of life is unexpected, and you have to deal with the twists and turns.

Living in my family, days rarely unfolded as planned. A bit overlooked, a little pushed around, I learned to roll with reality, negotiate a quick deal, and give the improbable a try. I don't sweat the small stuff, and I definitely don't expect perfect fairness. So what if our dining room table only has six chairs for seven people? Someone learns the importance of punctuality every night.

But more than punctuality and a special affinity for musical chairs, my family life has taught me to thrive in situations over which I have no power. Growing up, I never controlled my older siblings, but I learned how to thwart their attempts to control me. I forged alliances, and realigned them as necessary. Sometimes, I was the poor, defenseless little brother; sometimes I was the omniscient elder. Different things to different people, as the situation demanded. I learned to adapt.

Back then, these techniques were merely reactions undertaken to ensure my survival. But one day this fall, Dr. Hicks, our Head of School, asked me a question that he hoped all seniors would reflect on throughout the year: "How can I participate in a thing I do not govern, in the company of people I did not choose?"

The question caught me off guard, much like the question posed to me in Laredo. Then, I realized I knew the answer. I knew why the coat hanger had been handed to me.

Growing up as the middle child in my family, I was a vital participant in a thing I did not govern, in the company of people I did not choose. It's family. It's society. And often, it's chaos. You participate by letting go of the small stuff, not expecting order and perfection, and facing the unexpected with confidence, optimism, and preparedness. My family experience taught me to face a serendipitous world with confidence.

What Makes This Essay Tick?

It's very helpful to take writing apart in order to see just how it accomplishes its objectives. Stephen's essay is very effective. Let's find out why!

An Opening Line That Draws You In

In just eight words, we get: scene-setting (he is standing next to a car about to break in), the idea of crossing a boundary (he is maybe about to do an illegal thing for the first time), and a cliffhanger (we are thinking: is he going to get caught? Is he headed for a life of crime? Is he about to be scared straight?).

Great, Detailed Opening Story

More out of amusement than optimism, I gave it a try. I slid the hanger into the window's seal like I'd seen on crime shows, and spent a few minutes jiggling the apparatus around the inside of the frame.

It's the details that really make this small experience come alive. Notice how whenever he can, Stephen uses a more specific, descriptive word in place of a more generic one. The volunteers aren't going to get food or dinner; they're going for "Texas BBQ." The coat hanger comes from "a dumpster." Stephen doesn't just move the coat hanger—he "jiggles" it.

Details also help us visualize the emotions of the people in the scene. The person who hands Stephen the coat hanger isn't just uncomfortable or nervous; he "takes a few steps back"—a description of movement that conveys feelings. Finally, the detail of actual speech makes the scene pop. Instead of writing that the other guy asked him to unlock the van, Stephen has the guy actually say his own words in a way that sounds like a teenager talking.

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Turning a Specific Incident Into a Deeper Insight

Suddenly, two things simultaneously clicked. One was the lock on the door. (I actually succeeded in springing it.) The other was the realization that I'd been in this type of situation before. In fact, I'd been born into this type of situation.

Stephen makes the locked car experience a meaningful illustration of how he has learned to be resourceful and ready for anything, and he also makes this turn from the specific to the broad through an elegant play on the two meanings of the word "click."

Using Concrete Examples When Making Abstract Claims

My upbringing has numbed me to unpredictability and chaos. With a family of seven, my home was loud, messy, and spottily supervised. My siblings arguing, the dog barking, the phone ringing—all meant my house was functioning normally.

"Unpredictability and chaos" are very abstract, not easily visualized concepts. They could also mean any number of things—violence, abandonment, poverty, mental instability. By instantly following up with highly finite and unambiguous illustrations like "family of seven" and "siblings arguing, the dog barking, the phone ringing," Stephen grounds the abstraction in something that is easy to picture: a large, noisy family.

Using Small Bits of Humor and Casual Word Choice

My Dad, a retired Navy pilot, was away half the time. When he was home, he had a parenting style something like a drill sergeant. At the age of nine, I learned how to clear burning oil from the surface of water. My Dad considered this a critical life skill—you know, in case my aircraft carrier should ever get torpedoed.

Obviously, knowing how to clean burning oil is not high on the list of things every 9-year-old needs to know. To emphasize this, Stephen uses sarcasm by bringing up a situation that is clearly over-the-top: "in case my aircraft carrier should ever get torpedoed."

The humor also feels relaxed. Part of this is because he introduces it with the colloquial phrase "you know," so it sounds like he is talking to us in person. This approach also diffuses the potential discomfort of the reader with his father's strictness—since he is making jokes about it, clearly he is OK. Notice, though, that this doesn't occur very much in the essay. This helps keep the tone meaningful and serious rather than flippant.

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An Ending That Stretches the Insight Into the Future

But one day this fall, Dr. Hicks, our Head of School, asked me a question that he hoped all seniors would reflect on throughout the year: "How can I participate in a thing I do not govern, in the company of people I did not choose?"

The ending of the essay reveals that Stephen's life has been one long preparation for the future. He has emerged from chaos and his dad's approach to parenting as a person who can thrive in a world that he can't control.

This connection of past experience to current maturity and self-knowledge is a key element in all successful personal essays. Colleges are very much looking for mature, self-aware applicants. These are the qualities of successful college students, who will be able to navigate the independence college classes require and the responsibility and quasi-adulthood of college life.

What Could This Essay Do Even Better?

Even the best essays aren't perfect, and even the world's greatest writers will tell you that writing is never "finished"—just "due." So what would we tweak in this essay if we could?

Replace some of the clichéd language. Stephen uses handy phrases like "twists and turns" and "don't sweat the small stuff" as a kind of shorthand for explaining his relationship to chaos and unpredictability. But using too many of these ready-made expressions runs the risk of clouding out your own voice and replacing it with something expected and boring.

Use another example from recent life. Stephen's first example (breaking into the van in Laredo) is a great illustration of being resourceful in an unexpected situation. But his essay also emphasizes that he "learned to adapt" by being "different things to different people." It would be great to see how this plays out outside his family, either in the situation in Laredo or another context.

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Example 2: By Renner Kwittken, Tufts Class of '23 (Common App Essay, 645 words long)

My first dream job was to be a pickle truck driver. I saw it in my favorite book, Richard Scarry's "Cars and Trucks and Things That Go," and for some reason, I was absolutely obsessed with the idea of driving a giant pickle. Much to the discontent of my younger sister, I insisted that my parents read us that book as many nights as possible so we could find goldbug, a small little golden bug, on every page. I would imagine the wonderful life I would have: being a pig driving a giant pickle truck across the country, chasing and finding goldbug. I then moved on to wanting to be a Lego Master. Then an architect. Then a surgeon.

Then I discovered a real goldbug: gold nanoparticles that can reprogram macrophages to assist in killing tumors, produce clear images of them without sacrificing the subject, and heat them to obliteration.

Suddenly the destination of my pickle was clear.

I quickly became enveloped by the world of nanomedicine; I scoured articles about liposomes, polymeric micelles, dendrimers, targeting ligands, and self-assembling nanoparticles, all conquering cancer in some exotic way. Completely absorbed, I set out to find a mentor to dive even deeper into these topics. After several rejections, I was immensely grateful to receive an invitation to work alongside Dr. Sangeeta Ray at Johns Hopkins.

In the lab, Dr. Ray encouraged a great amount of autonomy to design and implement my own procedures. I chose to attack a problem that affects the entire field of nanomedicine: nanoparticles consistently fail to translate from animal studies into clinical trials. Jumping off recent literature, I set out to see if a pre-dose of a common chemotherapeutic could enhance nanoparticle delivery in aggressive prostate cancer, creating three novel constructs based on three different linear polymers, each using fluorescent dye (although no gold, sorry goldbug!). Though using radioactive isotopes like Gallium and Yttrium would have been incredible, as a 17-year-old, I unfortunately wasn't allowed in the same room as these radioactive materials (even though I took a Geiger counter to a pair of shoes and found them to be slightly dangerous).

I hadn't expected my hypothesis to work, as the research project would have ideally been led across two full years. Yet while there are still many optimizations and revisions to be done, I was thrilled to find -- with completely new nanoparticles that may one day mean future trials will use particles with the initials "RK-1" -- thatcyclophosphamide did indeed increase nanoparticle delivery to the tumor in a statistically significant way.

A secondary, unexpected research project was living alone in Baltimore, a new city to me, surrounded by people much older than I. Even with moving frequently between hotels, AirBnB's, and students' apartments, I strangely reveled in the freedom I had to enjoy my surroundings and form new friendships with graduate school students from the lab. We explored The Inner Harbor at night, attended a concert together one weekend, and even got to watch the Orioles lose (to nobody's surprise). Ironically, it's through these new friendships I discovered something unexpected: what I truly love is sharing research. Whether in a presentation or in a casual conversation, making others interested in science is perhaps more exciting to me than the research itself. This solidified a new pursuit to angle my love for writing towards illuminating science in ways people can understand, adding value to a society that can certainly benefit from more scientific literacy.

It seems fitting that my goals are still transforming: in Scarry's book, there is not just one goldbug, there is one on every page. With each new experience, I'm learning that it isn't the goldbug itself, but rather the act of searching for the goldbugs that will encourage, shape, and refine my ever-evolving passions. Regardless of the goldbug I seek -- I know my pickle truck has just begun its journey.

Renner takes a somewhat different approach than Stephen, but their essay is just as detailed and engaging. Let's go through some of the strengths of this essay.

One Clear Governing Metaphor

This essay is ultimately about two things: Renner’s dreams and future career goals, and Renner’s philosophy on goal-setting and achieving one’s dreams.

But instead of listing off all the amazing things they’ve done to pursue their dream of working in nanomedicine, Renner tells a powerful, unique story instead. To set up the narrative, Renner opens the essay by connecting their experiences with goal-setting and dream-chasing all the way back to a memorable childhood experience:

This lighthearted–but relevant!--story about the moment when Renner first developed a passion for a specific career (“finding the goldbug”) provides an anchor point for the rest of the essay. As Renner pivots to describing their current dreams and goals–working in nanomedicine–the metaphor of “finding the goldbug” is reflected in Renner’s experiments, rejections, and new discoveries.

Though Renner tells multiple stories about their quest to “find the goldbug,” or, in other words, pursue their passion, each story is connected by a unifying theme; namely, that as we search and grow over time, our goals will transform…and that’s okay! By the end of the essay, Renner uses the metaphor of “finding the goldbug” to reiterate the relevance of the opening story:

While the earlier parts of the essay convey Renner’s core message by showing, the final, concluding paragraph sums up Renner’s insights by telling. By briefly and clearly stating the relevance of the goldbug metaphor to their own philosophy on goals and dreams, Renner demonstrates their creativity, insight, and eagerness to grow and evolve as the journey continues into college.

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An Engaging, Individual Voice

This essay uses many techniques that make Renner sound genuine and make the reader feel like we already know them.

Technique #1: humor. Notice Renner's gentle and relaxed humor that lightly mocks their younger self's grand ambitions (this is different from the more sarcastic kind of humor used by Stephen in the first essay—you could never mistake one writer for the other).

My first dream job was to be a pickle truck driver.

I would imagine the wonderful life I would have: being a pig driving a giant pickle truck across the country, chasing and finding goldbug. I then moved on to wanting to be a Lego Master. Then an architect. Then a surgeon.

Renner gives a great example of how to use humor to your advantage in college essays. You don’t want to come off as too self-deprecating or sarcastic, but telling a lightheartedly humorous story about your younger self that also showcases how you’ve grown and changed over time can set the right tone for your entire essay.

Technique #2: intentional, eye-catching structure. The second technique is the way Renner uses a unique structure to bolster the tone and themes of their essay . The structure of your essay can have a major impact on how your ideas come across…so it’s important to give it just as much thought as the content of your essay!

For instance, Renner does a great job of using one-line paragraphs to create dramatic emphasis and to make clear transitions from one phase of the story to the next:

Suddenly the destination of my pickle car was clear.

Not only does the one-liner above signal that Renner is moving into a new phase of the narrative (their nanoparticle research experiences), it also tells the reader that this is a big moment in Renner’s story. It’s clear that Renner made a major discovery that changed the course of their goal pursuit and dream-chasing. Through structure, Renner conveys excitement and entices the reader to keep pushing forward to the next part of the story.

Technique #3: playing with syntax. The third technique is to use sentences of varying length, syntax, and structure. Most of the essay's written in standard English and uses grammatically correct sentences. However, at key moments, Renner emphasizes that the reader needs to sit up and pay attention by switching to short, colloquial, differently punctuated, and sometimes fragmented sentences.

Even with moving frequently between hotels, AirBnB's, and students' apartments, I strangely reveled in the freedom I had to enjoy my surroundings and form new friendships with graduate school students from the lab. We explored The Inner Harbor at night, attended a concert together one weekend, and even got to watch the Orioles lose (to nobody's surprise). Ironically, it's through these new friendships I discovered something unexpected: what I truly love is sharing research.

In the examples above, Renner switches adeptly between long, flowing sentences and quippy, telegraphic ones. At the same time, Renner uses these different sentence lengths intentionally. As they describe their experiences in new places, they use longer sentences to immerse the reader in the sights, smells, and sounds of those experiences. And when it’s time to get a big, key idea across, Renner switches to a short, punchy sentence to stop the reader in their tracks.

The varying syntax and sentence lengths pull the reader into the narrative and set up crucial “aha” moments when it’s most important…which is a surefire way to make any college essay stand out.

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Renner's essay is very strong, but there are still a few little things that could be improved.

Connecting the research experiences to the theme of “finding the goldbug.”  The essay begins and ends with Renner’s connection to the idea of “finding the goldbug.” And while this metaphor is deftly tied into the essay’s intro and conclusion, it isn’t entirely clear what Renner’s big findings were during the research experiences that are described in the middle of the essay. It would be great to add a sentence or two stating what Renner’s big takeaways (or “goldbugs”) were from these experiences, which add more cohesion to the essay as a whole.

Give more details about discovering the world of nanomedicine. It makes sense that Renner wants to get into the details of their big research experiences as quickly as possible. After all, these are the details that show Renner’s dedication to nanomedicine! But a smoother transition from the opening pickle car/goldbug story to Renner’s “real goldbug” of nanoparticles would help the reader understand why nanoparticles became Renner’s goldbug. Finding out why Renner is so motivated to study nanomedicine–and perhaps what put them on to this field of study–would help readers fully understand why Renner chose this path in the first place.

4 Essential Tips for Writing Your Own Essay

How can you use this discussion to better your own college essay? Here are some suggestions for ways to use this resource effectively.

#1: Get Help From the Experts

Getting your college applications together takes a lot of work and can be pretty intimidatin g. Essays are even more important than ever now that admissions processes are changing and schools are going test-optional and removing diversity standards thanks to new Supreme Court rulings .  If you want certified expert help that really makes a difference, get started with  PrepScholar’s Essay Editing and Coaching program. Our program can help you put together an incredible essay from idea to completion so that your application stands out from the crowd. We've helped students get into the best colleges in the United States, including Harvard, Stanford, and Yale.  If you're ready to take the next step and boost your odds of getting into your dream school, connect with our experts today .

#2: Read Other Essays to Get Ideas for Your Own

As you go through the essays we've compiled for you above, ask yourself the following questions:

  • Can you explain to yourself (or someone else!) why the opening sentence works well?
  • Look for the essay's detailed personal anecdote. What senses is the author describing? Can you easily picture the scene in your mind's eye?
  • Find the place where this anecdote bridges into a larger insight about the author. How does the essay connect the two? How does the anecdote work as an example of the author's characteristic, trait, or skill?
  • Check out the essay's tone. If it's funny, can you find the places where the humor comes from? If it's sad and moving, can you find the imagery and description of feelings that make you moved? If it's serious, can you see how word choice adds to this tone?

Make a note whenever you find an essay or part of an essay that you think was particularly well-written, and think about what you like about it . Is it funny? Does it help you really get to know the writer? Does it show what makes the writer unique? Once you have your list, keep it next to you while writing your essay to remind yourself to try and use those same techniques in your own essay.

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#3: Find Your "A-Ha!" Moment

All of these essays rely on connecting with the reader through a heartfelt, highly descriptive scene from the author's life. It can either be very dramatic (did you survive a plane crash?) or it can be completely mundane (did you finally beat your dad at Scrabble?). Either way, it should be personal and revealing about you, your personality, and the way you are now that you are entering the adult world.

Check out essays by authors like John Jeremiah Sullivan , Leslie Jamison , Hanif Abdurraqib , and Esmé Weijun Wang to get more examples of how to craft a compelling personal narrative.

#4: Start Early, Revise Often

Let me level with you: the best writing isn't writing at all. It's rewriting. And in order to have time to rewrite, you have to start way before the application deadline. My advice is to write your first draft at least two months before your applications are due.

Let it sit for a few days untouched. Then come back to it with fresh eyes and think critically about what you've written. What's extra? What's missing? What is in the wrong place? What doesn't make sense? Don't be afraid to take it apart and rearrange sections. Do this several times over, and your essay will be much better for it!

For more editing tips, check out a style guide like Dreyer's English or Eats, Shoots & Leaves .

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What's Next?

Still not sure which colleges you want to apply to? Our experts will show you how to make a college list that will help you choose a college that's right for you.

Interested in learning more about college essays? Check out our detailed breakdown of exactly how personal statements work in an application , some suggestions on what to avoid when writing your essay , and our guide to writing about your extracurricular activities .

Working on the rest of your application? Read what admissions officers wish applicants knew before applying .

Want to improve your SAT score by 160 points or your ACT score by 4 points?   We've written a guide for each test about the top 5 strategies you must be using to have a shot at improving your score. Download them for free now:

The recommendations in this post are based solely on our knowledge and experience. If you purchase an item through one of our links PrepScholar may receive a commission.

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Anna scored in the 99th percentile on her SATs in high school, and went on to major in English at Princeton and to get her doctorate in English Literature at Columbia. She is passionate about improving student access to higher education.

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94 College Education Essay Topics

🏆 best essay topics on college education, ✍️ college education essay topics for college, 🎓 most interesting college education research titles, 💡 simple college education essay ideas, ❓ college education essay questions.

  • College Education: Arguments For and Against
  • How Should We Deal With the Rising Cost of Education?
  • Effects of Poverty on Education in the USA Colleges
  • Education in High School Versus College
  • Nursing College Education and Career
  • Opportunity Costs of Education and Oil Industry
  • Should College Education Be Free for All US Citizens?
  • Should Public Colleges and Universities Be Tuition-Free? Realizing that student debt is a heavy burden, Bernie Sanders offers to make all public colleges and universities free of charge.
  • Colleges of Nursing’s Essentials of Master’s Education in Nursing The essentials provide the most basic components of the course content of a master’s degree that should not be ignored by the nursing colleges in the country.
  • Community Colleges: Making Education More Affordable Community colleges become a good solution for people, who do not know what kind of profession should be chosen or how to combine professional and personal lives.
  • Nutrition and Fitness Case Study: Phoebe, a College Freshman The principal target is the stabilization of blood sugar levels and nourishing the brain with the right type of food at the right times.
  • The Future of Kaplan College Education System This paper explores what Kaplan College education system would be in the year 2025. It describes the role of mobile technology in the future of higher education.
  • The Linkage Between College Education and Employees’ Productivity The paper discusses a direct linkage between college education and higher productivity in employees that can cause an improvement in the country’s economy.
  • Colleges of Education Preparation of Future Teachers People’s education depends on the teachers’ qualifications. The educational system all over the world tries to develop the system of education, in reference to future teachers.
  • The Real Value of a College Education College should mostly be about technical preparation for a white-collar or scientific career. Thus, business majors plow their way with a will through required courses in calculus.
  • The Impact of Parent’s Educational Level on College Students It has generally never been given enough thought, as to whether the educational backgrounds of the families of students may also have an impact on the way they carry out their studies.
  • Free College Education: Arguments in Support Making college affordable and accessible will also encourage students to graduate on time, which would increase the number of graduates from public educational facilities.
  • Medical Education: Getting into College and Training The fundamental basis for the preparation of a qualified and competitive graduate of a medical university is the formation of a harmoniously developed personality.
  • College Education: Who Will Pay for It? The news began a serious discussion of a painful topic of student debt upon graduation in the American education system.
  • College Education: To Do More, To Be More Many people understand the value of college education as a means of getting an economic payoff in the future. It is easier for college graduates to find work.
  • Free State College and Right for Higher Education Students should be able to attend college at no cost because it should be the right of every individual to experience higher education regardless of his/her economic background.
  • College’ Sports and Education Today, more than ever before, it is increasingly becoming clear that big-time college sports are adversely affecting the quality of education provided by American universities.
  • Education: Financial Aid for College Students Many people are determined by the cost of a college education. Financial aid has been made available so that financially less fortunate students can get the proper training for their careers.
  • Are General Education Classes an Obstruction? A Look at the College Education System and General Education Classes
  • College Education and Wages in the UK: Estimating Conditional Average Structural Functions in Nonadditive Models
  • Balancing School and Work for Students Pursuing College Education
  • Sorting, Selection, and Transformation of Return to College Education in China
  • College Education Geared Towards a Specific Career
  • Does Examination Hell Pay Off? A Cost-Benefit Analysis of Ronin and College Education in Japan
  • The Fight for Low or Free College Education in America
  • Credit Constraints and Human Capital Investment in College Education
  • Why Cultural Diversity Is Important in a College Education
  • Czech Relative Wages and Returns to Schooling: Does the Short Supply of College Education Bite?
  • Social Inequalities and Failures in College Education
  • The Main Factors Contributing to the Increase in the Cost of College Education in the US since 1975
  • The Perfect College Education: Obama’s Plan for College Education
  • College Education and Loans to Small Businesses Headed by Black Females
  • What Would Free College Education Help the Poor and the Rest of Us?
  • Making America Great Again With Free Community College Education
  • The Labor Market Returns to a For-Profit College Education
  • College Education Raises the Chances of Earning More in the Future
  • The Quality and Top Quality of the Modern Day College Education
  • Why State Government Should Invest in College Education
  • The Demand for College Education in Postwar Japan
  • College Education: Degrees Outweigh Debt
  • Why Prisoners Should Have Access to a College Education
  • The Importance and Issues Surrounding the Preparation of Students for College Education
  • The Obstacles and Struggles of the Latinos in Acquiring Proper College Education
  • The Need for College Education and Its Impact on the Current Economy
  • Educational Aspiration: Comparing the Value of High School Education vs. College Education
  • The Expensive College Education and the Real Price You Pay
  • College Education Should Not Be the Main Requirement for a Job
  • Student Debt and Its Effect on College Education
  • Finding Out Whether College Education Is Really Worth the Investment of Time, Money, and Energy
  • College Education System Today Without Technology
  • The Benefits and Values of Obtaining a College Education
  • The Validity and Quality of the Modern College Education
  • Important Skills for Gaining Success in College Education
  • College Experience: The Benefits of a College Education
  • The Idea and Benefits of Low-Cost College Education According to Brixby, Schramm, Stoetzer, and Sanders
  • How College Education Will Help to Achieve Lifetime Goals
  • Should Public College Education in the United States Be Free?
  • Who Should Pay For College Education: Parents or Children
  • The Importance and Positive Effects of High School and College Education
  • How Does a College Education Increase One’s Human Capital?
  • Why Does the Government Subsidize the Purchase of College Education?
  • Is College Tertiary Education?
  • Does a College Education Result in a Tangible Product?
  • In What Specific Ways Does a College Education Increase a Worker’s Productivity?
  • Is College Education a Public Good?
  • Why Were Women in the Past Less Likely to Invest in a College Education Than Men?
  • Should Voting Be Restricted to Those With a College Education?
  • What Is the Opportunity Cost of a College Education?
  • What Are Some of the Benefits to Society of College Education?
  • How Can a College Education Mitigate Wage Inequality?
  • Has the Benefit of College Education Increased Since the 1960s?
  • What Is Social Theory in College Education?
  • How Has the Cost of College Education in the United States Increased?
  • What’s the Difference Between a College Education and a University?
  • What Makes College Education Unique?
  • Is It Possible to Combine School and Work for Students Pursuing College Education?
  • What Changes Have Occurred in College Education in Recent Years?
  • What Is the Role of College Education in Life?
  • Is Middle Class College Education Affordable?
  • What Are the Functions of College Education From a Sociological Perspective?
  • What Is Theory and Practice in College Education?
  • How Can College Education Give a Person a Different Identity?
  • What Is the Purpose of College Education?
  • How Does College Education Create a Kind of Culture?
  • Who Are the Major Stakeholders in College Education?
  • What Does Inclusion in College Education Mean?
  • How Long Is College Education in USA?
  • Is College Education a Good Social Investment?
  • How Is Social Conditioning Implemented in College Education?

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StudyCorgi. (2022, July 14). 94 College Education Essay Topics. https://studycorgi.com/ideas/college-education-essay-topics/

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StudyCorgi . "94 College Education Essay Topics." July 14, 2022. https://studycorgi.com/ideas/college-education-essay-topics/.

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These essay examples and topics on College Education were carefully selected by the StudyCorgi editorial team. They meet our highest standards in terms of grammar, punctuation, style, and fact accuracy. Please ensure you properly reference the materials if you’re using them to write your assignment.

This essay topic collection was updated on December 27, 2023 .

Ultimate Guide to Writing Your College Essay

Tips for writing an effective college essay.

College admissions essays are an important part of your college application and gives you the chance to show colleges and universities your character and experiences. This guide will give you tips to write an effective college essay.

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Stuck on what to write your college essay about? Here are some exercises to help you get started.

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Student Story: Admissions essay about a formative experience

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Student Story: Admissions essay about personal identity

Get the perspective of a current college student on how she approached the admissions essay.

Student Story: Admissions essay about community impact

Student story: admissions essay about a past mistake, how to write a college application essay, tips for writing an effective application essay, sample college essay 1 with feedback, sample college essay 2 with feedback.

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The Admissions Strategist

College essay titles: are they important.

If you’re reading this, you are probably writing your college essays. Writing, drafting, revising, and proofreading your essays all play really important roles in the process.

One of the finishing touches on most pieces of writing is a title – but do you need one in a college essay? This guide gives you all the information you’ll need!

College Essay Titles: Everything to Know!

Click above to watch a video on College Essay Titles.

Are college essay titles important?

To be blunt: not really. The most important part of a college essay is the essay itself. Your essay should be personal, insightful, creative, and meticulously proofread. They do not need to be titled.

However, this doesn’t mean that a title is a bad idea. A title for your college essay falls under the “nice to have” category. A title isn’t something that an application reader will be looking for, but a well-done title can really help tie your essay together, especially if you have room in your word count for one.

How to think of a great college essay title

A title for any piece of writing should be brief, clever, and creative. Most importantly for college essays, they should add something to your piece. College essays often have a limited word count, so if you are going to be using some of the words for a title, it’s important to make sure it’s worth it!

To begin brainstorming a great college essay title, close your eyes. Think about your essay holistically. Likely you have been working on a micro-level of editing and revising: word choice, sentence structure, and other small-level changes. Try and zoom out.

What is the big picture of your essay? What is the major lesson you learned? Or, perhaps, what is the funniest part – what could be an exciting hook for your reader? Try and brainstorm a list of these ideas. Don’t worry about being brief yet.

Once you have an idea you like, workshop it down. Try and make your title as short as you can without sacrificing substance.

It might also be a good idea to ask some friends, family members, or teachers for advice. Sometimes it’s easier to see the big picture of an essay if you weren’t the person who actually wrote it.

Examples of poor college essay titles

A bad essay title is wordy, confusing, or just plain boring. Restating the essay prompt in a title, or an essay for that matter, is a waste of words and time. Avoid titles that sound like the following:

  • “My Most Memorable Moment” – boring
  • “The Importance of Finding Community in Unlikely Places” – boring and wordy
  • “Why I Want to Attend [University Name]” – boring
  • “Cars and Lessons” – confusing and vague, doesn’t add anything to the piece

Examples of great college essay titles

So, what does a good college essay title sound like? Great college essay titles are quippy, creative, interesting, and/or add something new to your essay. Here are some examples:

  • “Found Family, French Fries, and Football” – the alliteration shows some extra thought put into titling the essay. This title already tells a reader this will likely be about the author finding a community in a football team, but leaves the reader wondering how french fries factor into it all.
  • “Y-whay I-way Ove-lay Ig-pay Atin-lay” – this falls under the “creative” category. That title uses “Pig Latin,” a made-up “language” many people are likely familiar with. Once translated, this also piques the reader’s interest; how will Pig Latin be relevant in a college essay?
  • “It’s The Lemurs” – this title is for an essay answering “Why Do You Want To Attend Our School,” and the author chose to write about the university’s lemur research center. This is a short and surprising title, and definitely leaves the reader wanting to know more!

Conclusion: College Essay Titles

When push comes to shove, your essay is your essay, and you know it best. If you feel certain that the best title for your essay breaks one of the above rules, that’s okay. Our guidelines are just that: guidelines.

Hopefully, this guide helps you understand the purpose of college essay titles and how to come up with good ones. Remember, essay titles for college applications are certainly not necessary, but can add a lot if done correctly.

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good title for essay about college tuition

good title for essay about college tuition

Best Tips on How to Title an Essay

good title for essay about college tuition

How to Make a Good Title for an Essay

The success of an essay heavily depends on its title. This may not come as a surprise given that the essay title is the first aspect to provide the reader with a sneak peek into the text. It piques our interest to read the paper in the first place and gives us a preview of what to expect from the author.

Our research paper writing help prepared a thorough guide on how to title an essay. Here you may find tips and tricks for developing an effective APA or MLA essay title. So, let's dive straight into the article for more exciting details!

Essay Title Format

During your essay writing process, ensure you know the stylistic requirements before beginning an essay. Knowing the format you need to employ is crucial because different style manuals may have varying requirements. Mostly, you could have used an APA or MLA essay title format. Our service, where you can buy essay online , explains these two in more detail below.

Essay Title MLA

If you're required to create an essay title MLA format, check whether your instructor wants you to make a separate cover page. If not, put a heading at the beginning of your work that includes your name, the name of your professor, the course ID, and, lastly, the date.

On the other hand, if you must present a cover page for your essay title MLA, then you need to include the following:

  • The name of the college
  • The title of your paper
  • The subtitle of your paper, if applicable
  • Your first and last name
  • Your teacher or professor's name
  • The class name or course number
  • The date the paper is due

The formatting instructions are as follows:

  • Double-spaced
  • Times New Roman font
  • Size 12 font
  • Apart from very short terms, each word's initial letter should be capitalized. The initial word, however, must always be uppercase.
  • The title page shouldn't include a header with the page numbers.

Essay Title APA

Having discussed the MLA format essay title, let's explore what the APA student title page includes:

  • The paper title
  • Author names
  • Institutional affiliation where the author carried out the study
  • Name and number of the course
  • Professor name
  • Page number

The title of an essay format instructions:

  • double-spaced
  • 1" margins
  • 12-point Times New Roman
  • According to APA, your title should be targeted and brief, without unnecessary words or abbreviations

How to Choose a Good Title for an Essay: Important Qualities

Nobody will read a dull headline. Your title should grab your audience's attention and encourage them to read the rest of the work. As it is one of the initial things readers see, having a strong attention grabber is essential when writing an essay from scratch. To fully understand how to come up with a title for essay that is strong and exciting, let's consider a few following factors:

Employ a Catchy Hook - Usually, the title of essay format follows a similar basic structure, especially if they are used for an academic article. The hook serves as a unique component that attracts the reader. It's a captivating statement informing others about the topic of the essay. You can also explore several types of sentences with examples that can help you develop the ideal hook structure.

Consider Topic Keywords - These are essential terms or expressions pertinent to your subject and help your reader understand the focus and body of your article. These focus keywords should serve as a brief, one- to two-word article summary. You can choose some terms from the research topic your instructor gave you, but after your thesis statement is formed, this is where you should hunt for ideas.

Use a Colon - A colon is frequently used in academic titles to separate concepts and sentences. The standard procedure is to place a clever remark or brief quotation before the colon. Although these beginning words offer flavor, they can be overdone. Because of this, some individuals find using the colon to be repugnant. Therefore be careful not to misuse this method.

Ask a Question - To write essay title that is strong, consider asking a question. But, use it with caution because posing a question will make your tone less formal. As long as the question is suitably phrased to meet the subject of your essay, feel free to employ it. Always check to see if the title question still applies to your points in the essay's body. The thesis statement should be appropriately reflected as well.

Find Inspirational Quotes - There is no formula for selecting essay titles from the textual content. You may get playful and choose any quotation, proverb, or catchphrase that applies to your particular publication and works as a title. You may also create a great essay title using well-known expressions or idioms. Doing so will help your readers relate to and feel more comfortable discussing your subject.

How to Title an Essay headline

Here are other rules for how to create a good title:

  • Title every section of writing: In the process of writing, create interesting subheadings to give your paragraphs an identity. Also, they make your text look ordered and clear. 
  • The title must bear the theme of the text: choose a title that summarizes the essay. 
  • Capitalize all words with certain exceptions: Capitalize the first letter of every word in the title, but do not capitalize pronouns, articles, prepositions, and conjunctions.
  • Avoid underlining the title: Since topics come in boldface, underlining it will amount to overemphasis. Some authorities say that if you must underline it, do not bolden it.
  • Review the final version of the title: Do not forget to do a quick review of the final version of the title—check for grammar, structure, spelling and so on. Re-read it to determine if the title has given justice to the essay. Confirm if the topic is catchy enough to attract your reader’s attention. 
  • When using a colon in your title, follow the rules: Since we are dealing with punctuation rules here, let us talk about the colon – when you have two eye-catching topics, separate them with a colon.

Student’s Guide on How to Come Up with a Title for an Essay

Titling an essay can be easy, but there are a few core principles to be taken into account. The following tips will help you stay on track and avoid any common pitfalls.

Essay Goes First

Never start with a title! If you write it before the rest of the text, it will be based on it, and it should be vice versa. Writing an essay before choosing a heading will give you a clear understanding of what should make sense to the reader. Re-read the finished paper several times to decide on the title. The last thing to create is a title - such strategy will give more time to spend on crafting an essay outline, conducting research, or writing the paper itself.

How to Title an Essay, Complete Guide 2

What are you writing about? What is the style of your paper, and is it an academic essay or a free-form essay like a narrative essay? If the topic of your essay is “Do people who commit heinous crimes deserve the death penalty?” your title should not be humorous; it should be strict and to the point.

If your topic is “Why do people like watching funny cat videos?”, feel free to craft a funny title. Determine the tone of your essay and base your title on it—in consideration with the essay’s topic.

The tone can be:

  • Serious - “The implications of global warming”
  • Funny - “How cats and dogs love their masters”
  • Amiable - “Ways to fight depression”
  • Persuasive - “Why positive thinking is a must have skill for every person”
  • Informative - “Ten rules for creating a chemical at home”

The main goal of a title is to name its paper. There is no need to tell an entire story in the title, or provide any useless details. Sum up your paper in a few words! Another way to do this is to sum up your thesis statement, as it represents the main idea of your essay. Take your thesis and squeeze it into 3-4 words. Imagine that you are creating a title for your favourite newspaper or a slogan for Coca-Cola.

Don’t use fancy words! Take 2-3 main words (keywords), put them together, and stop wasting your time. Avoid jargon and abbreviations.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is something that can help any student and young writer reap benefits. While working on a title, detect the words related to the central idea of the paper. Type the words into the search field of Google and add the word “quote.” A search engine will show numerous web pages with in-text quotations that could be useful. Select the fragment you like. It is possible to learn how to make a creative title for an essay in this way.

Discover several more tips from experts:

  • Never forget the “What,” “Who,” “When,” “How,” “Why,” and “Where” questions (if you start with one of these questions, your title has a chance of getting noticed);
  • Come up with an unexpected image not related to the selected topic;
  • Sometimes, starting with a lie increases the chances of a title being able to catch an eye;
  • Review our catchy essay title examples.

Need Some Help With Your Essay's Title?

Feel free to contact EssayPro and we will provide you with a writing help at a moment’s notice. With the years of essay writing experience, titling becomes second nature, so you no longer need to worry about having a catchy headline on your paper.

Essay Title Examples: Bad vs Good

The strongest essay titles condense lengthy essays into concise statements. When wondering how to make an essay title, think carefully about your stylistic choices and essay format to produce an excellent one. Our dissertation help has provided essay title examples to let you understand the difference between good and bad ones more vividly.

bad good essay titles

Bad Essay Title Examples

As we discussed how to create an essay title and the specific elements that go into it, you should have a clear idea of how important it is to craft a strong title. In contrast, first, look at weak essay title ideas that can break your paper. This should serve as an example of why your heading should not be like this:

Ex 1: ' How Television Has Changed Our World ' - too vast and not informative

Ex 2: 'The Ara Pacis Augustae' - unclear for those who don't know Latin

Ex 3: 'The Most Poisonous Frog' - does not provide any insight

Ex 4: 'A Brief History of Subcultures and How They Manifest Themselves in a Constantly Changing Socio-Economic Environment' - too long and complicated

Ex 5: 'The Little Mermaid 29 Years Later: Selling a Harmful Sexist Message Through a Naughty Image' - inappropriate language

Good Essay Title Examples

Now that you know what a bad essay title looks like, let's explore good essay title examples as their substitutes. Examine the following essay title format styles that will give you a clear understanding.

Ex 1: ' The Electronic Babysitter: A Social History of Uses of the Television' - gives an exact description of what the essay will be about

Ex 2: ' The Modern Historical Significance of the Ara Pacis Augustae to the City of Rome' - here, the reader can understand what they will be reading about

Ex 3: ' A Deadly Beauty: The Evolution of Skin Coloration and Toxicity of the Poisonous Dart Frog' - clear, informative, and on-point.

Ex 4: 'Reconsidering Counterculture in Contemporary Society' - informative enough and brief

Ex 5: 'The Projection of Gender Stereotypes in The Little Mermaid' - employs appropriate language

Catchy Essay Title Ideas

You now understand that long, complicated headlines do not accurately convey the paper's main idea. Take ample time to consider the word choice before tilting your work. How do you create good essay titles? Think creatively and with common sense. But meanwhile, for your convenience, we compiled title ideas for essays you may use as inspiration.

Persuasive Essay Titles

  • Why Receiving College Education is Important: Examining Long-term Benefits
  • Face-to-Face Courses Cannot Be Replaced by Online Learning
  • An MBA Does Not Ensure Corporate Success.
  • Every Company Should Adopt a Green Strategy.
  • Energy Drinks Represent a Lucrative Market Segment.
  • Aircraft, Excess Weight Charges, Need to be Prohibited.
  • Patients' Life Shouldn't be Put to Death by Nurses.
  • Google Glasses May Increase the Number of Auto Accidents.
  • All of the Conventional Malls Will Soon be Replaced By Online Shopping
  • How Do Team-building Exercises Contribute to the Development of Inventions?
  • Illegal immigrants are entitled to remain in the US.

Academic Essay Titles

  • Several English Dialects: The Link Between Various Cultures
  • Instagram: A social media innovation
  • Is it possible to reverse drug-induced brain damage, and if so, how?
  • What the Future Holds for Humans in the Light of Artificial Intelligence
  • The Story of Two Nations after Decades of Conflict: North and South Korea
  • Video Games and Their Learning Context in Schools
  • Free Wi-Fi: Strategies for Enhancing the City's Economy

Strong Research Paper Titles

  • Digital World Cybersecurity
  • E-business to Provide New Paths for Booksellers
  • Outsourcing for Large Businesses
  • Preparing for College Costs for High School Students
  • What News Reporters Should Do in the Digital Age and How to Do It: Examples
  • The Transformative Power of Music: How Heavy Metal Impacted My Life

Best Essay Titles for College Students

  • The Possible Benefits and Risks of Artificial Intelligence for Humans
  • The Potential for Time Travel in Virtual Reality
  • What Role Has Mathematics Played in Human History?
  • How to Succeed in the Real Estate Industry
  • E-Commerce: An Empire of Virtual Businesses Worth Millions of Dollars
  • How to Achieve Financial Independence in the Digital Age Without Opening a Real Business

More Creative Titles for Essays

  • When getting rewarded for their grades, would kids do better left alone?
  • How Does Fake News Impact the Mainstream press?
  • Homelessness in Contemporary Society: A Dilemma
  • What News Reporters' Best Job Is in the Digital Age and How to Uphold It
  • Elon Musk: Brilliant Mind or Insane Person?
  • Positives and Negatives of Employing a Smoker
  • Do We Employ the Appropriate Student Success Metrics?

Professional Academic Help

Now that you know how to make a good title for an essay, you should also understand that you should approach the task as a process. While composing your essay title, you must condense your whole thesis and point of discussion into a single, concise, yet powerful sentence. If you have time before your deadline, give it some thought and don't hurry.

Don't forget that you can always rely on our professional academic assistance, whether you need a reflection paper , ideas for a strong essay title, or any other academic papers. Consider the following words - write my essay for me - magic keywords for delegating your most complex tasks to our skilled writers!

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Forging good titles in academic writing

Published on March 20, 2015 by Shane Bryson . Revised on July 23, 2023.

The title is the first thing your reader will see, and most readers will make their first judgements of your work based on it. For this reason, it’s important to think about your titles carefully.

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Table of contents

Informative, striking, appropriate, title templates, writing effective headings, other interesting articles, informative title.

Your title should, above all else, convey the topic of your paper. In other words, no matter how witty, clever, original, or otherwise appealing your title may be, it fails if it is not informative.

Decide whether you’ve given a sense of the paper’s topic and claims by comparing your title’s content to the most important aspect(s) of your dissertation statement or hypothesis and conclusions.

Striking title

A striking title is one that entices your audience to read, so know your audience’s tastes.

The analogy of cultivating sexual attraction in a prospective mate is useful here: some audiences will be enticed by a title’s edginess (as with, for example, V. Alneng’s “‘What the Fuck is a Vietnam?’ Touristic Phantasms and the Popcolonization of [the] Vietnam [War],” published in Critique on Anthropology ); others will almost always prefer a more straightforward title (as with J.C. Henderson’s “War as a tourist attraction: The case of Vietnam,” published in the International Journal of Tourism Research ).

You should be able to gauge how edgy your title can be by the tone of your discipline or the publication you’re submitting to, and your main concern should be forming a title that appeals to your readers’ specific tastes.

Consider also that a title that highlights the paper’s fresh insights will often be striking.

An endocrinologist, for example, might become very excited upon seeing the collaboratively authored article “Comparison of the effects on glycaemic control and β-cell function in newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes patients of treatment with exenatide, insulin or pioglitazone: A multicentre randomized parallel-group trial,” published in 2015 in the Journal of Internal Medicine .

This rather long title is more acceptable in the sciences, where what readers tend to find provocative in a title is the degree to which it reveals the paper’s specifics.

Appropriate title

Ensuring that your title is appropriate in a way of making sure not only that your audience understands it, but also that its appeal contributes to its meaning. To make sure the title will be understood, you need to consider how familiar your research topic will be to your audience.

In an academic essay, you can use highly technical terms in your title, but generally avoid terms that the average well-read person in your discipline might not know.

In any writing that has a broad audience, titles need to avoid language that is too sophisticated; a news article, for example, should be easily understood by all.

As a second consideration of appropriateness, make sure that your title does not entice without substance.

The title of Alneng’s paper, for example, does not use “fuck” merely to shock and therefore entice the reader; the uncommon use of a swearword here helps convey the topic of the article: more or less vulgar representations of Vietnam.

The same is true for other striking titles, such as Nancy Tuana’s “Coming to Understand: Orgasm and the Epistemology of Ignorance,” published in Hypatia .

The title’s sexually charged play on words (“coming to understand”) hooks the audience, but is not merely a hook. The pun is directly relevant to the essay’s argument, which is that sexual pleasure offers an important form of knowledge.

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  • Use key terms. Find words that your audience can easily identify as markers of the topic matter. These will include, for example, terms that convey the field of research, central concepts, or subjects of study.
  • Identify the context (sometimes called “the location”). By context, I mean the source or the setting of the discussion, depending on discipline. In a history paper this might be a certain century or era; in literary studies a certain book or author; and in the sciences an organism or compound.

The following is a list of title formats, with examples of each. I’ve given the names of the publications in brackets to give a sense of how different disciplines treat titles.

Note that these are not mutually exclusive patterns (i.e. it’s possible to have various combinations; e.g. General & interesting: Informative & specific). Note also that this is not meant to be an exhaustive list.

  • Striking: Informative – The Specter of Wall Street: “Bartleby, the Scrivener” and the Language of Commodities ( American Literature )
  • Informative: Striking – Carbon capture and storage: How green can black be? ( Science )
  • General: Specific – The issues of the sixties: An exploratory study in the dynamics of public opinion ( Public Opinion Quarterly )
  • “Quotation”: Discussion (social studies) – “I’d rather not talk about it”: Adolescents’ and young adults’ use of topic avoidance in stepfamilies ( Journal of Applied Communication Research )
  • “Quotation”: Discussion (literary studies) – “I Would Prefer Not To”: Giorgio Agamben, Bartleby and the Potentiality of the Law ( Law and Critique )
  • Simple and precise – Methodological issues in the use of Tsimshian oral Traditions (Adawx) in Archaeology ( Canadian Journal of Archaeology )
  • Topic: Method – Mortality in sleep apnea patients: A multivariate analysis of risk factors ( Sleep )
  • Topic: Significance – LC3 binds externalized cardiolipin on injured mitochondria to signal mitophagy in neurons: Implications for Parkinson disease ( Autophagy )
  • Technical and very specific – Single-shot quantum nondemolition measurement of a quantum-dot electron spin using cavity exciton-polaritons ( Physical Review )

Although similar, headings are not the same as titles. Headings head paragraphs and help structure a document. Effective headings make your paper easily scannable.

Common high level headings in dissertations and research papers are “Methods”, “Research results”, and “Discussion”. Lower level headings are often more descriptive.

If you want to know more about AI for academic writing, AI tools, or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

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Shane finished his master's degree in English literature in 2013 and has been working as a writing tutor and editor since 2009. He began proofreading and editing essays with Scribbr in early summer, 2014.

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Hey everyone, I'm trying to come up with some catchy titles for my college essays. Do you have any tips or suggestions on how to make it interesting and engaging? Thanks!

Hi there! While it's understandable to want an engaging title for your college essay, it's actually more important to focus on crafting a meaningful and impactful essay first. Once you've done that, a fitting title will often naturally present itself. However, I do have some general guidelines to help you generate an interesting and relevant title:

1. Keep it brief: A good title is usually short and concise, ideally around 3-7 words. This will make it easy to remember and capture the reader's interest.

2. Reflect the content: Ensure your title is directly connected to the content in your essay. It should provide some insight into the main theme or message you're conveying.

3. Be intriguing: Aim for a thought-provoking or attention-grabbing title that will pique the reader's curiosity and make them want to learn more about your story.

4. Avoid clichés: Stay away from overused expressions or phrases. Instead, opt for something unique and specific to your essay topic.

5. Consider wordplay: If appropriate, you can use puns, alliterations, or other creative wordplay to make your title more memorable.

6. Balance creativity and clarity: While you want your title to be interesting, make sure it's not too abstract or difficult to understand. The reader should be able to get a sense of your essay's topic or message from the title.

Remember, at the end of the day, the content of your essay is what will truly make or break your application. Once you have a strong essay, selecting an appropriate and engaging title should be much easier. Good luck!

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How to Write an Essay on College Tuition?

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Academic writing

good title for essay about college tuition

Many students wonder how to write an essay on college tuition, as this topic is growing in popularity these days. So, it is crucial to know how everything works in this field. And, of course, you will need a lot of interesting info for your text. No worries, you will get it from this article about professional paper writing.

When writing something as difficult as a ‘how do you plan to finance your education essay,’ you will need to do a lot of research. Let us take the United States as an example. The problem with tuition fees has been rising for decades. Just in the early 2000s, people were paying much less for studying than they do now. Back then, students were paying around $8,000 to get into college. The private ones were already quite expensive; you could pay about $28,000 for 4 years of studying. Nowadays, the situation is shocking, as you will have to pay almost $25,000 to get in an average public university, while for a private college, you will need to pay twice more, over $49,000. Those numbers are astonishing, and people want to know the reasons for this rise.

So, what to start with? Well, there are many options, but probably the best thing to do is organize your working process. There are many ways to create a perfect workplace, and some of them might not work for you, so just do what you think will help you. For example, putting a bottle of water before you start writing the text will prevent you from going to the kitchen a lot of times. Also, it’s a good idea to keep some pieces of paper on your table as a draft so that you can jot down some notes when you get some really worthy ideas.

Alright, let’s move on closer to what you will need to do. The next thing to think about is a good title for your why college should be cheaper essay. What are the ideas? This topic is quite difficult to cope with for some students, as they did not get into this problem that much. Also, the facts are mostly statistical, which disallows you from getting too creative. Instead, you can try to put the info, which you think is crucial for the readers to know.

After you are done with your header, it is time to think more about the content of your text. First of all, you will need a lot of statistical facts. For example, in a student loans essay, you will need to include many statistics about the loans that students usually take in order to pay for their studies. What you want to do before including all of that statistics is check whether it is true or it is from the unknown forum or some controversial blog. That is crucial in cases when you should operate with true facts and figures. To check whether the numbers are real, try to look them up online. If the statistics appear to be on several sites with a good name, you can use it for your essay. That would be crucial in a government interference into a free market student loans essay paper, as you will have to be as accurate with your words as you possibly can. What are some interesting figures for this topic? Here are some that you can use in your text:

  • The government would have to spend over $66 billion to make the public universities free.
  • The price of the college has increased to 400% since the 1980s.
  • Just 0.3% of the students get full-ride scholarships for their studies.

After you are done searching for the statistics, you will have to look for some interesting facts about your topic. For example, a simple free education essay will not be that engaging if you do not include some curious info. So, to make your text even better, you should try to use some facts that will be fun reading and somehow useful. When looking for these facts, also remember to check whether they are real or not. You do not want to get a low grade just for using one of those fake facts, do you? Now, let us go straight to the actual facts about tuition and loans. It would be quite easy to give you a ready-made proposal essay thesis on student loans, but trust us; these facts are way much more interesting!

  • Over two-thirds of Americans come out of their college with debt.
  • There are many countries in the world were where education is free for everybody.
  • A normal student will not get more than 10% of applied scholarships.

After you are done with these facts and figures, you want to think about the intro of your pay for college essay. This article will follow you step-by-step so that you will be able to get the best possible text.

The introduction to your student loan debt essay

What do you need to create a perfect first paragraph? First of all, think of your text as a whole, as you will have to add the following paragraphs to fit the first one. To help yourself out, you can make a small list of the things you want to include in your paper.

Moreover, the easiest way of getting the best starting part of your text is to use something that you can call a hook. If you surf the Web, you will see that every student loans essay example engages the reader with some interesting phrase. You may still wonder what a secret of a perfect hook is? Pick the most interesting fact that you have and think if it is amazing for your audience. That is a crucial thing to do as that allows you to have the best hook for your essay on college tuition.

Next, going further in your writing, try to give your reader enough information to understand what they will read about. Also, make sure that you have taken care of the transition. When moving on to the main part, you will need to make it readable, which is possible only if you create a transitional part. For example, it will be crucial when writing an avoiding student debt persuasive speech or something else where you need your ideas to go one by one, not as separate pieces of information.

The other great thing to do is to add some statistics. It might sound wrong because people are used to seeing numbers in the middle part of the text or even towards the end. However, choosing an interesting statistical fact, you will definitely engage your reader. After you are done with all of that, you can go ahead and think what to write further in your student loan essay. So, let us move on to the most difficult, yet the most important part of the paper.

Main part for the essays on student loans

Before you even start, you have to estimate whether you have enough information for your text. Even if you operate with a lot of facts and figures, you still might be short on something else. In this case, you’d better visit your local library or look for info on some reliable websites. Alright, when you are done with searching the data, you can move on to the next step, which is the transition again. If you are successful with the transition part in your introduction, it will be no problem for you to keep writing it again in this section. Even in your college tuition research paper, you need to have transition, as without it, the text will be just a list of facts and figures, which will simply make it unreadable. And of course, it is important to stick to the main rule of wiring essay body: each argument should be supported by the example and divided in a separate paragraph. The main part usually contains 2-3 sections.

Rising college costs essay main part

It is crucial to do big research on this topic in order to get what you need. Read a couple of researches on the theme you are writing about. That will help you get some basic knowledge on why the cost of college is getting higher every year. Even though this topic seems to be difficult, and you might want to quit writing the text, the causes of the rising costs are pretty simple. They are all dictated by the simple economic rule – supply causes demand.

If you take a look at the situation before WWII, you will see that a small percentage of Americans had obtained an education. After the war, this percentage was getting higher every year. Back then, just around 5% of people have completed four years of college or more, while in 2016, the number increased by many times, and over 30% of Americans now have finished four years of college. That, of course, causes colleges to raise the payments for studying because universities simply need more resources for those studying. So do not forget to mention this factor in your is the cost of college too high argumentative essay.

However, there might be some doubt about whether the price is reasonably high. Indeed, the prices will be getting higher every year. But why are they getting that high? Well, before going into the conspiracy, we will need to talk about some aspects that also influence the costs every year. You will be able to use all of this info even in an is college worth the cost essay.

So, as we all know, natural resources are getting more and more expensive every year. That is a key factor for the universities because, as we know, the number of students is getting higher every year, making it hard for colleges to pay for the resources they use. That includes one important factor, which is the price of gas. In the future, when other students will be looking at how to write a college should be free essay, this issue will still be one of the key factors why colleges are so expensive and why people should pay for them. However, that is not the only reason why the college payments are getting higher every year.

The other crucial factor year is the technological advance. For example, if you look at some technical colleges, you will be surprised by how much money they put into advancing their technological devices. For instance, colleges like MIT are spending a huge part of their expenses just to keep their computers up-to-date. By the way, it would be an awesome idea to put this info in your student loans research essay. And just like with the natural resources, the college needs to find more money to provide every student with the highest level of technology. And if somebody thinks that there is no need to have everything so complicated, for some students, having advanced technology in the university is the only way of completing their projects. That factor is crucial to include in your college should not be free essay, as it shows that without paying for the university, the students will have to buy a lot of things on their own. And of course, it would impose an additional financial burden on many young people.

So these facts are quite convincing, even for such a paper as college is too expensive essay. But now, it is time to move on to the second part of your main piece of text. That will be the part where you are doing to describe what the rising prices are going to bring to us in the future if we do not find a way to stop them from raising with every year. The following information is especially useful if you are working on a rising college tuition research paper.

college tuition

Effects of the rising cost for the colleges

As you already know, the number of those studying at the university has been growing since the 1950s, which was bringing up the cost of studying. So, why was the number of those who are studying getting bigger even though the cost was getting higher? Well, at those times, the prices were getting higher just a little, while the new students were getting a lot of benefits from being in a college. Even the fact that you were in a college was giving you a lot of privileges when applying for a job. This is an interesting information that you can include in your essay on student loan debt.

However, nowadays, the situation is changing, and the fact that you are a student of a prestigious university does not really make you a name. You will need a lot of hard work to go along with the college diploma. So, with the prices for the colleges getting higher with every year, fewer people will be willing to pay that much for studying. State in your should college tuition be free essay, that nowadays, apart from college studies, young people have a variety of online and offline courses to choose from.

The other great effect is the fact that some people will not receive any education at all. That will cause some to work on the lower-paid jobs. That means that the government will be getting fewer taxes from these people, which is a good argument for college should be free persuasive essay. However, the situation will be bad for people too, because they will not have enough money to afford some things that are crucial in the modern world. Therefore, this situation should be changed as soon as possible. You may describe such consequences in the rising cost of education essay.

So now, you have substantial arguments for your text. However, make sure that you did a good job checking for some mistakes. The other things that you want to check are whether you used the best examples you could and whether you will need to change something in your student loan debt research paper. After you are done with that, it is time to move on to the last paragraph, which will be one of the most difficult things for a starting writer, as it requires you to have a lot of information to be analyzed in a short amount of words. However, do not hesitate to spend a considerable amount of time on conclusion because this is the most important part of college tuition argumentative essay or any other paper.

It is probably the only part where you don’t need any kind of extra information to write. All you need for this is just an ability to analyze what you already have written in the text. That actually completes the student loans essay outline. However, you will have to be a professional on the topic you are writing about because that is the only way to create a perfect conclusion.

What to write in a research paper on student loans conclusion?

Well, it actually depends on the type of essay. If you were assigned to write an easy one, then you can state a personal view of the problem at the end of the paper. Or, on the other hand, you can try to tell your readers what you think the future of the situation is going to be like. You have many different options to end your text in this situation. However, the situation with an argumentative essay on student loans is different, as you are not allowed to put in too much of your personal thoughts and systematize all the facts that were mentioned in the paper. And of course, do not forget to restate your thesis.  

By the way, we’ve got a good tip for you; in your essay, you can use infographics. In most cases, teachers allow to include pictures in argumentative texts. So you can add some statistics that will be shown in the graphs. However, you will still need to show your personal attitude when creating a conclusion like that. You are allowed to do almost the same thing when writing a persuasive essay on how student loans are bad. Except, you will have to remember that the persuasive essays are more difficult to write, as you cannot show both sides of the problem. Therefore, you will definitely need to have a personal idea of what you are writing about.

Now let’s talk about a conclusion for a research paper. It is a bit more difficult to write than the usual essay. However, if you will follow this advice, you will be able to create a perfect last paragraph for your text. So, when writing the conclusion for your research paper on the effect of college students debt, try not to get too much into details. All of the details you had to give to the reader are left in the previous paragraphs. Your conclusion should not be too overloaded with the extra data. You will just need to show your reader what this situation might bring us to in the future if we do not do anything about it. Or the great way to finish this type of text is to show your readers some solutions to this problem.

There are some other interesting tips that you might and should use in your essays about college education. But what are they? And how will they help you to get the best text? Well, let us find out.

What to add to your essay?

First of all, make sure that you have checked your text for mistakes. That is something that professionals might not do because they think they have enough skill to write a perfect text right away. And they are always wrong, as the typos and grammatical errors happen to everybody, and even the most experienced authors might be able to make a mistake.

So, after your text is checked, you can think of some ways to make it even better. A great thing that many students keep forgetting about is quotes. They might not be appropriate for some types of text like federal student loans essay outline. However, in most cases, they will only make your essay better. Still, it is not as easy as some might think. You will have to check whether your quote fits the content perfectly. The quotes shouldn’t be just an addition, but an indispensable part of your text. It’s also a bad idea to include a quote as an introductory statement for student loans essay.

And of course, make sure that the person you are referring to has actually said those words and that they are just like the ones that you are using in your text. The last advice is that it would be an awesome idea to use quotes in a college tuition persuasive speech or any other type of speech. So follow our advice, and you will see that adding a relevant quote will make your essay really decent.

How to write should college be free essay?

There is one more topic that you could write about — should colleges be free or not. It’s both a difficult and important topic to discuss, and you need to take a few additional steps before writing your why college should be free essay. Use some of our tips and useful information for your essay. Let us break this topic into 2 sections: why college should be free and why not.

Why colleges should be free?

Unfortunately, ‘Should colleges be free for everybody?’ is not a yes or no question; it’s something much more complicated. For ages, this topic was debated and discussed, but since then, nothing seemed to change. So, maybe we have to answer another question first: ‘What is actually higher education for us, and why do we need it?’

First of all, many students are concerned about the high cost of college tuition. Not everyone can afford expenses like that, and even if the student has had excellent grades and has been doing well academically, chances to get the education they deserve decline if they come from a low-income family. Most people have to pay the college debt for years after graduation, and many see it as a big challenge. Those who have graduated with higher loan debt have a lesser chance of owning a house, getting married and having kids, and simply pursuing their goal in life. Include this reason in your “should college education be free” essay.

Of course, not everybody is willing to go to college — and that is totally fine. In some cultures, there has been a popular belief that you will not be able to do well in life without getting a higher education. Of course, that is not true. Instead, more students should be encouraged to go to college or university if they feel like they want to.

In addition, many students from low-income families refuse to apply to more popular and prestigious universities due to the high cost of their fees. This creates a gap between wealthy and poor, even if the students have similar abilities and talents. Moreover, many students feel stressed about paying for their education. Worrying affects social life and academic performance, so maybe if young people did not have to worry that much about how to get the money, they would perform much better. Include all of these points in your persuasive essay on why college should be free.

Of course, this problem is multifaceted and requires a systemic approach. In your essay on free college education, you have to mention some of the ways that the government might use to help its citizens to get a better education. Some of these include decreasing expenses and stopping wasteful government spending, making public colleges and universities tuition-free, giving more grants to talented students, and creating possibilities for those who come from low-income families. Of course, you could support this idea in your “avoid student loans consider scholarship” essay by highly recommending applying for grants and scholarships instead of choosing the regular way.

Why colleges should not be free?

While writing the argumentative essay about college, remember to include some thoughts that are opposite to those that have been mentioned before. In this case, write reasons why college actually should not be free. You have to provide information without judging it, even if you disagree with a topic. Remember: your essay must introduce a reader to different sides of the same issue so that he or she could form their opinion independently. 

What does free college mean? It means that taxes will increase even more. People will have to pay for the future education of young people, but some of them who will use the opportunity to study for free might drop out, switch colleges, or just perform poorly. Eventually, money that was spent can be regarded as a waste. Consider discussing this point in your free college education essay.

Unfortunately, the level of dropouts will increase too. It is going to be easier to become accepted to the university, and so many choices about further education will be taken without that much effort put in working and studying. More students will change their colleges several times, and this will create a huge mess.

If you feel like you need more information about tuition and its impact on students, feel free to use some scholarly articles on college tuition. You never know what kind of information is going to be useful for you.

Still, students’ loans are one of the biggest problems that make the debate whether college should be free or not even harder. It’s awful that young people have to work for years to pay their loans, and it might get even worse with free colleges since students may perform really poor and drop out. There is no need for attacking student loans in the argument of essay, but the writer should not avoid this theme either. How to approach such a subtle topic then? You could actually do a separate persuasive essay on student loans to do deeper research. In such a paper, you can analyze both sides considerably. Also, you could help future students by writing avoiding student loans essay to explain to them how not to get into a trap that will lead to a huge debt.

So, it’s hard to say whether colleges should be free or not. However, what we know for sure is that many countries need to change the system of education. You never know what’s going to happen next, but spreading the word about important topics nowadays is something that’s going to help the changes actually happen.

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Expert Commentary

The pros and cons of ‘free college’ and ‘college promise’ programs: What the research says

We've gathered and summarized a sampling of research to help journalists understand the implications and impacts of “free college,” “tuition-free” and “college promise” programs.

free college promise tuition financial aid research

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License .

by Denise-Marie Ordway, The Journalist's Resource October 8, 2019

This <a target="_blank" href="https://journalistsresource.org/economics/free-college-promise-tuition-research/">article</a> first appeared on <a target="_blank" href="https://journalistsresource.org">The Journalist's Resource</a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.<img src="https://journalistsresource.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/cropped-jr-favicon-150x150.png" style="width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;">

More than 19.9 million students are taking classes at colleges and universities across the United States this semester, up from 14.9 million two decades ago, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

As enrollment has swelled, so has the price of college. The average combined cost of undergraduate tuition, fees, room and board at four-year schools has doubled since 2000 . The average cost of attendance for full-time students living on campus at an in-state, public college or university during the 2017-18 academic year totaled $24,320 . It totaled $50,338 at private institutions.

Heavy student debt loads created America’s student loan crisis. A recent report from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis shows that outstanding student loan debt topped $1.6 trillion in the U.S. during the second quarter of 2019.

State and federal lawmakers and 2020 presidential candidates have put forward a range of plans aimed at reducing college costs to curb student debt and encourage more Americans to pursue degrees. Most programs and proposals focus on eliminating tuition at community colleges and state universities. But some also aim to cover educational costs such as mandatory student fees, which schools charge to help pay for student events, health services and other campus offerings.

These initiatives often are referred to as “free college” — even when they only cover tuition — and as “tuition-free” programs. A number of cities, counties and states have introduced “college promise” programs, which also pay students’ tuition and, sometimes, other expenses at two- and four-year institutions.

Recent research indicates there are hundreds of college promise programs in the U.S. Some are small, serving students in a city or public school district. Others are open to students across a state. In 2015, Tennessee became the first state in the country to offer free tuition at all of its community colleges and technical schools with its Tennessee Promise Scholarship . Earlier this month, officials in San Antonio announced AlamoPROMISE , which will allow students who graduate from one of 25 local high schools to receive 60 credits worth of free tuition at five area community colleges starting in fall 2020.

New York’s Excelsior Scholarship , launched in 2017, is the nation’s first statewide program to provide free tuition at state-funded two- and four-year colleges. The program is open to New York residents who have a household income of $125,000 or less and agree to live and work in New York for the same amount of time they receive the scholarship.

To help journalists understand the implications and impacts of these efforts, we’ve gathered and summarized a sampling of research on “free college,” “tuition-free” and “college promise” programs. Because most programs are relatively new, scholars are continuing to study them. We will add new research to this collection as it is published or released.

Also check out these five tips for reporting on free college and college promise programs from Laura Perna, an education professor at the University of Pennsylvania who’s also executive director of its Alliance for Higher Education and Democracy.

Merit Aid, College Quality, and College Completion: Massachusetts’ Adams Scholarship as an In-Kind Subsidy Cohodes, Sarah R; Goodman, Joshua S. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics , 2014.

This study examines a Massachusetts program that offers tuition waivers to high-achieving students who graduated from Massachusetts public high schools. The waivers, a key component of the John and Abigail Adams Scholarship Program , cover the cost of tuition for up to eight semesters at any Massachusetts state college or university.

The key takeaway: While the scholarship induced some of these students to remain in Massachusetts for college — a primary goal of the program — it reduced college completion rates, find the authors, Sarah Cohodes , an associate professor of economics and education at Teachers College, Columbia University, and Joshua Goodman , an associate professor of economics at Brandeis University. After the program started, about 200 fewer Massachusetts high school graduates per year earned college degrees.

Cohodes and Goodman find that each scholarship, valued at less than $7,000, encouraged students with high test scores to attend in-state public colleges and universities, which “were of lower quality than the average alternative available to such students.” Going to a lower quality school is associated with higher odds of dropping out, possibly because public institutions spend substantially less on instruction than private, non-profit colleges, the authors suggest. They analyzed a variety of data on Massachusetts students who graduated high school between 2005 and 2008, tracking them through 2012.

“The scholarship, though relatively small in monetary value, induced substantial changes in college choice,” Cohodes and Goodman write. “College completion rates decreased only for those subsets of students forgoing the opportunity to attend higher quality colleges when accepting the scholarship. We describe the magnitude of this response as remarkable because the value of the scholarship is dwarfed by estimates of the forgone earnings of attending a lower quality college or failing to graduate.”

Free Tuition and College Enrollment: Evidence from New York’s Excelsior Program Nguyen, Hieu. Education Economics , 2019.

New York’s Excelsior Scholarship — the nation’s first statewide “free college” initiative — has had a “negligible” effect on undergraduate enrollment in four-year colleges in the state, finds Hieu Nguyen , a researcher at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Nguyen examined enrollment at public and private higher education institutions to gauge how students are responding to the initiative, launched in 2017 with the goal of helping more New York residents go to college. He looked at full-time undergraduate enrollment in the fall semesters between 2010 and 2017. He finds that even though students were offered free tuition, there was no statistically significant change in enrollment.

Nguyen indicates the program’s requirements might have discouraged some students from participating. “Apart from having to meet the state residency requirement to be eligible for the program, Excelsior recipients are expected to stay and work within the boundary of the state for the same number of years for which they receive the financial aid,” he explains in the paper. “While this constraint can be interpreted as fairly lax and reasonable by some, it might be viewed by others as too stringent, considering that New York has a high average cost of living relative to other states, and that Excelsior scholars are only awarded up to $5,500 per year after all other aid resources are exhausted.”

He notes that the Excelsior Scholarship is unlikely to change enrollment patterns among low-income students, whose tuition often is covered by other forms of financial aid such as federal Pell grants. Nguyen also notes the Excelsior program lacks a coaching component — unlike the Tennessee Promise program, which uses “community coaches” to help guide high school students toward graduation and immediately into college.

Understanding the Promise: A Typology of State and Local College Promise Programs Perna, Laura W.; Leigh, Elaine W. Educational Researcher , 2018.

This academic paper offers a detailed look at the characteristics of college promise programs and introduces a framework for classifying them. The researchers analyzed 289 programs operating in the U.S. in fall 2016 and found they varied in numerous ways, including in their eligibility requirements, the types of costs covered, the structure of financial awards, the length of time students can receive the awards, and the number and types of higher education institutions that participate in the program.

“Perhaps most importantly, the analyses underscore the need for policymakers, practitioners, and researchers to recognize the diversity of approaches that is masked by the college promise label before drawing conclusions about the transferability of findings about one college promise program to another,” write the researchers, Laura W. Perna and Elaine W. Leigh of the University of Pennsylvania.

Perna and Leigh find that college promise programs have these features in common:

  • They aim to boost higher education attainment.
  • They offer a financial award to eligible students.
  • They have a place-based requirement such as residing in a specific city or state or attending a certain school or group of schools.
  • They tend to target the traditional college-age population.

Some other findings:

  • College promise programs exist nationwide, but the largest share of those that were analyzed — 37% — are in the South. A quarter are in the Midwest while 24% operate in the western U.S. and 14% are in the Northeast.
  • Just over half of the college promise programs are state-sponsored. More than three-quarters of state-sponsored programs require award recipients to live in the state for a year. Most — 80% — allow students to attend a two-year or four-year school.
  • Of those not sponsored by a state, 23% target students in a specific county, 24% target a school district and 11% target a city. More than half of programs that are not state-sponsored offer awards only to two-year colleges.
  • Of the programs examined, 28% cover full tuition and take a “last dollar” approach, meaning they cover the amount of tuition left over after a student’s grants, scholarships and other financial aid money are applied. Meanwhile, 12% cover the full cost of tuition on a “first dollar” basis, meaning the award is applied first, allowing students to use other forms of financial aid to pay for other education-related expenses such as books, housing and food .

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Home / Essay Samples / Education / Learning / College Tuition

College Tuition Essay Examples

Should college be free: analysis of benefits and drawbacks.

The question of whether college education should be free in the United States has been a subject of ongoing debate. Proponents argue that free college would increase accessibility and reduce the burden of student debt, while opponents raise concerns about the cost, potential devaluation of...

Why College Should Be Free: an Investment in Education and Society

Access to quality education is a fundamental right that should be available to all, irrespective of their socioeconomic background. However, the rising costs of higher education have made it increasingly difficult for many individuals to pursue a college degree. In this essay, we will explore...

College is not for Everyone: Why It Should Be Free

With the development of the world and technology improving, the demand for awareness is growing. College education not longer for some people only. But still have many people cannot gaining knowledge in college because of the high cost. So, college education should be free now?...

Issues in Modern Education: Should College Be Free

A majority of highschool students today plan to go to college to continue their education​.​ Many parents would want their kids to live the life that they never had​.​ ​ When a student is choosing their dream college, they want to be able to live...

The Problem of High Cost of College

Our world is always changing. Clothes come in and out of style, views change and develop, technology improves, and prices increase and fluctuate. Some things change for the better, while others seem to change problematically. If you were to ask your parents what life was...

Is College Worth the Cost

The pursuit of higher education has long been considered a pathway to personal and professional success. However, the rising costs of college tuition have sparked a heated debate about whether the investment in a college education is truly worth it. In this essay, we will...

Analysis of the Main Arguments on Why College Should Be Free

In today's world, a college education has become a necessity for success. Why college should be free - the answer to this question is given in the essay, moreover, we will make a conclusion on this controversial topic as the cost of higher education has...

Why Public College Tuition Should Be Free

Going to college without a scholarship can be a scam especially if you can’t financially support it. Many people feel obligated to continue to go to college even though they know they will be in a lot of debt afterwards. The hope of obtaining a...

College Tuition in America Should Be Lower

Today, a great issue lies ahead of us; a great issue that we will face in the near future. Our journey into college begins in a few years and the problem that we see in the distance affects some people more than others. The tuition...

The Upsides and Downsides of Free College Tuition

Throughout the years there have been several students that choose to attend college. Many of those students get into debt that they will not be able to pay off during their lifetime. College is meant for students to go and pursue a higher level of...

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